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Fox News host Eric Bolling is advising a black congresswoman to "step away from the crack pipe" because "you saw what happened to Whitney Houston."

In a segment Thursday on the Fox News morning show Fox & Friends, co-hosts Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt and Eric Bolling took time out of their morning to poke fun at Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) for saying that banks were "shaking in their boots" at the prospect of her becoming the next chair of the House Financial Services Committee.

"The Democrats would have to then win the majority in the House," Doocy explained. "And I haven't heard many professional prognosticators say that there is really any good possibility that that's going to happen."

"This is also the same congresswoman who a year ago said that President Obama should line up the gangsters and tax the bankers out of existence," Bolling recalled. "She points out that if the Democrats take back the House and Barney Frank is going to retire, she's the senior-most member. She could invariably could be leadership in Financial Services, who thinks that we should tax the bankers out of existence."

"What is going on in California -- how's this? Congresswoman, you saw what happened to Whitney Houston. Step away from the crack pipe, step away from the Xanax, step away from the lorazepam because it's going to get you in trouble," he added. "How else do you explain those comments?"

"I'd only say, 'Stay classy, congresswoman,'" Doocy quipped.

This isn't the first time Bolling has created a controversy with racially-tinged remarks.

Last year, he apologized after charging that President Barack Obama had allowed a "hoodlum in the hizzouse" by meeting with president of Gabon.

The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg called Bolling's comment "open and revolting racism at Fox."

(H/T: Media Matters, Think Progress)

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Princeton University professor Cornel West thinks Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is wrong to suggest that racism no longer matters in this country.

Cain had told CNN's Candy Crowley Sunday that some simply used racism as an excuse when they failed to achieve their goals.

"I have seen blacks in middle management move up to top management in some of the biggest corporations in America," the candidate explained. "They weren't held back because of racism. No, people sometimes hold themselves back because they want to use racism as excuse for them not being able to achieve what they want to achieve."

Appearing on CNN Monday, West suggested Cain must be smoking something to think that racism no longer held back people of color.

"Well, black people have been working hard for decades," West remarked. "I think he needs to get off the symbolic crack pipe and acknowledge that the evidence is overwhelming. And I think he also knows that if brother Anthony Davis -- a brother who was just put to death -- were a white Wall Street banker brother, that the response in the nation would have been very different as opposed to a poor black brother."

"And that's just one small example -- one very small example of racism still at work holding people back."

PBS host Tavis Smiley found the notion that racism was no longer important so absurd that he was disappointed in CNN anchor Suzanne Malveaux for even calling attention to Cain's comments.

"It just troubles me, respectfully Suzanne, that CNN and MSNBC and Fox News and all these cable channels go for this nonsense," Smiley said. "They fall for -- if I can quote Eddie Murphy -- you fall for the banana in the tailpipe, and every time that Herman Cain says something ridiculous or crazy, blaming poor people for being poor, calling protesters anti-capitalist or suggesting that racism doesn't hold people back... It's almost silly to respond to because the evidence is so overwhelming."

"Well, Tavis, I certainly don't think that CNN is falling for anything by simply bringing up this discussion," Malveaux argued. "That's his point of view and he certainly is rising in the polls among the Republican candidates there."

"My point, respectfully, anyone who listens to what Herman Cain says and asks a question, 'Does he have a point?' A point about what?" Smiley asked. "The numbers -- it's so evident. It's so abundantly clear. There's such great clarity here that race is still a factor. You covered the president in the White House. Why does President Obama have a Secret Service detail that there's no comparison in history for any president... and we're talking about whether he has a point about racism in America?"

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As many problems as I have with the health care bill that just passed, President Obama did make a good point on the media and how they're treating the polls and what Americans think about the bill. Once the policies go into place we're going to get a fair hearing on public opinion on what the bill does rather than one driven by the massive amount of disinformation which has been fueled primarily but not exclusively by ClusterFox along with a lot of the rest of our corporate media.

It's really pathetic that so much of the public still doesn't have any idea what is in the bill since the media is not doing their job with informing them about it. It's a corporate friendly bill that keeps our system in tact but there are good things in it. If you listen to a good deal of our corporate media and the right wing hate machine it's an evil Socialist takeover of our health care system, which I would welcome frankly, and as Obama noted, if you listened to Republican lawmakers the world was going to end the day it was enacted.

If President Obama actually cares about how terrible our media is right now, he'd have the FCC crack down on Fox for hate speech and they'd break up the media monopolies in the United States that Bill Clinton helped to create when he passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Until I hear him talking about fixing the mess that is the corporate propoganda machine out there that passes itself off for an unbiased media or journalism in our country, he can talk to the hand when complaining about "journalists" even if his point was valid here on how the media is interpreting the polls on the health care bill. There's a larger problem behind those polls and that is media ownership. When I hear him address that or see his administration take some action with breaking up these media companies, I'll have some hope for democracy being restored in the United States.

We do not have a media which informs the public when five or six companies control the vast majority of that music, movies, radio stations, newspapers and television stations the majority of the country listens to, reads to or watches. Obama can bitch all he wants about our media not covering him fairly but until these companies are broken up, nothing is going to change.

Bill Maher repeats the point he made in his column at the HuffPo in this edition of New Rules. I agree with him that the firing of all of the teachers at a struggling Rhode Island high school is not a solution to the problems with our education system and I can't believe the President defended it either.

New Rule: Let's Not Fire the Teachers When Students Don't Learn -- Let's Fire the Parents:

New Rule: Let's not fire the teachers when students don't learn - let's fire the parents. Last week President Obama defended the firing of every single teacher in a struggling high school in a poor Rhode Island neighborhood. And the kids were outraged. They said, "Why blame our teachers?" and "Who's President Obama?" I think it was Whitney Houston who said, "I believe that children are our future - teach them well and let them lead the way." And that's the last sound piece of educational advice this country has gotten - from a crack head in the '80's.

Yes, America has found its new boogeyman to blame for our crumbling educational system. It's just too easy to blame the teachers, what with their cushy teachers' lounges, their fat-cat salaries, and their absolute authority in deciding who gets a hall pass. We all remember high school - canning the entire faculty is a nationwide revenge fantasy. Take that, Mrs. Crabtree! And guess what? We're chewing gum and no, we didn't bring enough for everybody.

Read on...

Well, at least he's not attacking the teachers' unions in this segment. I agree with Maher that it's not good for parents to allow the television to become a babysitter for their children. Sadly he fails to get to some the larger social and economic issues that are involved in this extremely complex problem as well.

One of Bill's guests on the show was former N.M. Gov. Gary Johnson who's also Chairman of Our America Initiative. I assume Bill likes this guy since he's advocated for the legalization of marijuana. From looking at his group's web site and the little bit I read about him he's also a Ron Paul and tea bagger movement loving Libertarian. He argued for school vouchers on the show which amounts to nothing more than funneling money away from our public schools, pulling the best students with the least problems into private schools and making this problem even worse yet, and Bill didn't blink an eye.

Maybe the next time Bill wants to rail on about "firing the parents" he should take a deeper look at the underlying problems with our public education system and our economy and the stresses those parents are under right now. His argument is about as ridiculous as firing all of the teachers.